Theme Of The Sniper By Liam O Flaherty

Decent Essays
The theme of the story, "The Sniper" by Liam O'Flaherty is there are no true survivors in war. A person can leave a war realizing they did something they didn't intend to do. An individual may go into war with the idea that they will fight for their country, and not realize that they have become a cold-blooded killer simply because of circumstance, just like what happened to the Republican sniper after he shot the Free Stater, "Then when the smoke cleared, he peered across and uttered a cry of joy. His enemy had been hit," (O'Flaherty 147). When the sniper was happy after he killed the Free Stater, it showed how he was blinded by his commitment to protect his country, and how he forgot he was destroying another human being. The aftermath of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    McCary also discusses how war has affected soldiers emotions: “Many of my fellows will cry for no mercy, no compassion. For those responsible, for those whose goal is destruction purely for effect, death only as a message, for whom killing is a means of communication, I cannot promise we, or I, will give pardon”. This show’s how they have sacrificed their emotions as a result of war and how now they are “brainwashed” into only wanting to kill. They also sacrifice their lives as McCary talks about how he’s lost many friends because of the war. “They’ve killed my friends..…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The reader expresses how pulling the trigger within the darkness of his environment could lead to many deaths and/or injuries only characterised by the intense screams of one's life ending. Readers are made to feel empathetic towards the soldier's position, as he has been put in a situation he many struggle to…

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    People perceive soldiers as strong, brave and young heroic men who march in parades, win glorious battles, bring enemies to their knees and ironically promote peace and democracy to the world. These men are ready to put their lives on the line and fight and defend their country at whatever cost. Cowardice is far from the mind of mere individuals when the word “soldier” is mentioned. However, when Tim O’Brien allows his readers to get a glimpse into the lives of these men whom we gaze upon with great revere, crippling fear and paranoia gnaws at the mind of these men as they trudge through the battlefields. The main reason for war is a contradiction in itself; a gruesome fight which results in the death of many and and the main goal is to restore…

    • 972 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    the adults involved. Some may consider such “loyalty” to be misguided, but the journalists’ refusal to make a bad situation worse was the very essence of the second type of courage. The film also exhibits the first type of courage. It would have been easy for Sarah Polley to keep quiet about the situation and simply live her life, but instead, she came forward and shared her story in spite of the difficulty.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    A civil war is described as two groups or nations fighting against each other in the same country. "The Sniper" and "Cranes" have many similarities and differences about a civil war. "The Sniper" is about a civil war. The main Character is the republican sniper. He is very sick of the war and want to be done with it .…

    • 291 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien explores the experiences of a platoon from the Vietnam war in a series of short stories. The stories go deeper than the events of the war, they show the moral dilemmas soldiers face everyday in the battlefield. Tim O’Brien served in the Vietnam war, but these stories are not based off of his experience, although it plays a role in his storytelling. Most of the short stories are written in first person from the perspective of Tim O’Brien, a fictional character not based on the author, but some are written from other perspectives to provide depth. Tim O’Brien uses perspective and imagery to show the effect of war on soldiers and the guilt from killing they experience in the short stories “The Man I Killed”…

    • 1696 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    War can make the happiest person we know turn into someone completely different. It can affect them in different ways, causing them to go insane and to change. As noticed in The Things They Carried, readers were able to witness such changes in someone’s mental and physical state. O’Brien took his readers through a journey of different stories from his fellow war mates. Whether or not they were true, completely false, or only showed a little bit of the truth, the stories still go to show us how such an event can alter a person’s state of mind.…

    • 2022 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    A Soldier's Home Analysis

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Pages

    “You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count of having both at once.” This quote by Robert A. Heinlein is strongly depicted in A Soldier’s Home. Krebs, who served in World War I, came home from the war a year late.…

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Sniper” by Liam O’flaherty and “Lather and Nothing Else” by Hernando Tellez really digs deep and somehow manages to play with emotions. Giving away that both stories circulates around the topic of war, O’flaherty and Tellez still portrayed the meaning of the stories in two completely different styles. Though both stories took place during a war, “the Sniper” happened in the battlefield on a rooftop at night while “LANE” happened in a barber shop in the afternoon away from an actual battlefield. As readers, we can easily assume that majority of wars happen in the form of an external or a person vs person conflict with both sides somehow relying on something usually for safety purposes. The two stories did successfully present these points…

    • 202 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Soldiers Home Analysis

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The painful stories of broken soldiers often go untold and get overshadowed by the tales of bloody glory and triumph. In the short story “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway, the tragic stories that go without mentioned gets brought to the center of attention giving way to a different outlook on war. Harold Krebs returns back state side from the war a few years after the war was over. He was not greeted with the warmest of welcomes like the ones we have become accustomed to seeing in this day in age. The story of Harold Krebs is in many ways like that of american hero Chris Kyle in the movie American Sniper.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A battlefield in a nameless county has troops fighting on both sides. One side is the United States of America, holding the banner freedom for all in its grasp. Shots from both sides are being fired and bombs pinpoint on their intended location, all the while a man is down below fighting simply because he was told to. This man will die on this battlefield as a United States soldier fighting for people he has never seen. He has a wife and kids, his son graduating high school looking to be just like him and a daughter just now entering in the fourth grade.…

    • 1072 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Sniper” is a story set in times of the Irish Civil War, depicting a Free Starter sniper who undergoes a huge change in the face of killing an enemy sniper. He is dehumanized from pain and killing others, seeing people only as targets. He is also desensitized to aspects of the war most civilians would be very afraid of, which is shown through the pain of when he gets shot in the arm--the narration only depicts it as a “deadened sensation”. However, once he finally succeeds in killing the enemy sniper, “the lust of battle of battle died in him”--meaning that he’s no longer desensitized from war. The story also states that “He became bitten by remorse”, meaning that he no longer sees the enemy sniper as a target, but rather a person; this also signifies the end of his dehumanized war state.…

    • 726 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Comparative Analysis: of perception and reality for “A Jury of Her Peers” and “The Sniper” A characters perception on killing and death in the short stories “A Jury of Her Peers” and “The Sniper” is the same because in any matter of feelings that you have will harm someones life and both short stories give this perception in different ways. But they can also be different because each short story they shows two different perceptions by revenge and on purpose. The main character in the short story “A Jury of Her Peers” is Minnie Wrights and this story is facing perception because she has an inspiration of wanting to kill her husband due to the loneliness she feels since she has gotten married with him.…

    • 1128 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Theme Of The Sniper

    • 220 Words
    • 1 Pages

    The theme in “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty is that war is not worth fighting and killing your own family The theme of “Cranes” by Hwang Sunwon is that friends and family come first than your duty. In the two stories, “The Sniper” and “Cranes”, Their were many thing that I found different in their themes. There was no similarities in their theme.…

    • 220 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This shows how harmful the war was to the soldier’s psyche, where all feeling seemed to become more intense and cause them to act rashly and try and control their…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays